I read with interest your piece in the Daily Mail
online about publishing all of the names of people on benefits, and I wanted to
respond to it personally as one of those people on benefits.

I can understand your interest in finding out
where the money you pay goes and who it is paid to, and so I will introduce
myself:

My name is Katie, I am 31 years old and I have
been claiming benefits for several years. I claim the higher rate of mobility
allowance and the middle rate of care allowance for DLA because I find walking
too painful and difficult and I need help with basic tasks like getting up and
dressed, food preparation and a whole host of other practical things. Because
of my disability I am unable to work and so also claim employment and support
allowance, including extra money given to me to meet to meet the extra costs
involved in my life due to the disability.

My money goes on lots of things, for example I
cannot use my hands to write or type without pain and so I use speech
recognition software, which I have to pay for myself, and including the headset
comes in at around £200. A large part also goes on transport-fuel costs,
wheelchair hire, taxis because I am unable to drive because of my disability.

So, I want to say First: thank you.

I am actually profoundly thankful to the people
who pay their taxes to enable me to live my life. It is a frequent source of
wonder to me that people I don't know are giving me money to a complete
stranger, and not an infrequent source of guilt that I am reliant on other
people, even though I know logically it is not my fault that I am ill or need
to claim benefits. When I was a child and a young adult I never thought that
this is where I would end up, but life is unpredictable, and I am grateful that
when I became unable to support myself this state supported me.

Tax, and the benefits system, is to me a great
gift, an evidence that we live in a civilised society. It is the embodiment of
the concept that 'there for the grace of God go I". It is the
acknowledgement that life is uncertain, and we would like others to be treated
in the way that we would want to be treated in that situation, and that that
situation can come about out of the blue.

People end up on benefits for all sorts of
reasons - that they are disabled or are looking after a disabled relative,
because they live in an area where
there is a lack of jobs, because they are single-parent with young children,
because they are elderly, because they are between jobs, because they have
graduated university only to find they graduate job market has shrunk.

These are just the people who entirely rely on
benefits, a large amount is also spent on “top up benefits" the
people who are working but are still unable to have enough money to live on. [1]

I hope that other people will come forward with
their names and their stories, to show you why we have come to be claiming
benefits. But the thing is, most people won't, most people will be to frighten
or ashamed to be honest about it.

You say that if people are ashamed they shouldn't
claim benefits, but that shame doesn't come from inside them, it comes from
internalising the judgements that people make about those on welfare like your
assertion "that we now give payouts to people who don’t really
need them – and for long periods of time".

It is also worrying to see your naïveté about
people's behaviour towards benefit claimants. You say that “surely, no one
needs to worry about violent retribution against claimants". But there has
been a worrying increase in physical and verbal abuse towards people on
benefits, especially disabled people, because people have internalized the
government's judgement that we are “scroungers". I myself was verbally
abused a few months ago by a stranger who told me that I was pretending to be disabled
and that I was “one of those scroungers". [2]

What disturbs me in your article is not that you
want to know where your money goes, or if it's being spent well, but that the
assumption that at least half of its is being misspent on people who do not
need or deserve. You say“ publishing the data will clearly show that we now
give payouts to people who don’t really need them – and for long periods of
time” Do you have any evidential basis to back up this claim?

You assume that, like the Victorians did of their
poor, that a person's poverty and need to claim financial help is their own
fault, that there is something that they could be doing to change their
situation but they're not.

I don't normally bother arguing with people who
think like you, but you have money, and you have the power to say what you
think and it has become something that can influence other people.

You are a director of an economics institute and
things you raise are questions of economics not of personal fault. The people you
blame are just the ones most affected by the economic situation. They are the
canaries in the mine, signalling there is something wrong.

Instead why not look
at the genuine reasons for why there are higher levels of poverty that lead to
benefit claims:

Why unemployment rates are so high in certain
areas of the country, where industrialized manufacturing and mining has ended
but new jobs have not been created.

The number of jobs available versus the number of
people out of work: However strong an individual’s
motivation to work the truth is that there are about 500,000 job vacancies, yet
at least 2,500,000 people looking for work.

Why house prices have increased so much that many
people cannot afford to pay the mortgage or the rent as well as their other
living costs, and how the lack of social housing means that the government is
having to fork out so much money in housing benefit to private landlords.

That thanks to new advances in medicine, people
are living longer than they used to, increasing the length of time people draw pensions. People
who previously would have died through accident or disability are now also able
to live, but are unable to support themselves, and so claim benefits.

At the real wage cuts and freezes for those who
do have jobs, meaning that people who work are still below the poverty line and
need to claim. Between 2008 and 2013 the minimum income standards for a family
have four have risen 25%

Look at the number of job cuts and also the
increasing instability of many jobs, where people are offered casual or short
term contracts, leading to people having to claim job seekers allowance between
jobs.

1 comment:

Katie, this is one of the most moving posts I have ever read. I believe that the greatness of any society should be judged by the way it treats its weakest members: the young, the old, the sick, the dying etc. I, for one, and I know that I am not alone, am happy for my taxes to be used to provide for those who cannot do so for themselves.

what is a disabled Gnostic Christian(ish) Buddhist Pagan poet psychic to do?

I have often felt like I have fallen through the cracks in society, existing between the things that usually define the edges of people's lives and identity. But cracks are not only things to fall through, they can also be things to look through. And looking through back at the society from the edge is an interesting view.

About Me

Recently featured on a Radio 4 show 'Poetry Workshops' and shortlisted for the 2010 Bridport Prize, Katie is a rising star in the South West. Her poems combine vivid and sensual imagery with a lyrical quality to create subtle poems exploring the light and darkness in the world, and in ourselves.